The present invention relates to a system and method for providing integrated voice quality measurements for wireless networks.
Determination of voice quality for a telecommunications network has traditionally been an expensive and tedious process where data is collected using test calls and reference speech files. Data is then submitted to a subjective voice quality measurement facility, e.g., Dynastat, Inc., to evaluate quality in accordance with International Telecommunications Union (ITU) P.800 standards. This process is typically a relatively costly endeavor. Alternatively, the same field-collected data may be processed using existing objective measurement tools, in accordance with ITU P.862, which is a standard for calculating telephone call quality using the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) method.
Test calls are often made through coordinated field personnel, which is a logistically intensive process that requires detailed coordination. Only an identified suite of test calls can be made to try to provide a sufficient sample that accurately reflects subscribers' calling patterns in the production network.
If a subscriber is not satisfied with the voice quality of a call, he may call a customer service telephone number to complain about the quality. Complaints about voice quality require subscribers to identify details of calls, e.g., location, time of data, etc., after the call has been completed. There is, however, no automated way to assess voice quality at the demarcation point between a subscriber and an operator to an external carrier for a Service Level Agreement (SLA) dispute.
In one known system including a server and clients, one client end injects a reference speech file into a production network and another client end records the resultant speech. Both files are fed into a server that compiles the result for reporting. This architecture, however, is not able to provide the complete sample with additional information such as Carrier-to-Interference (C/I) data, location, etc. There is no way to replicate the call scenario for a bad call complaint. The architecture can only assess impairments in the core network. Furthermore, the sample provides limited information and does not take into account the entire subscriber population.